Mr. Faber is unsuccessful in his interpretation of the "image of the beast." His reasoning is ingenious, specious and intelligible as usual. He labours to prove that the worshipping of images by the Papists is the meaning of the symbol. Material images, however, whether of papal origin or otherwise, are harmless vanities: "for they cannot do evil, neither also _is it_ in them to do good," (Jer. x. 5.) The case is quite otherwise with this image. It has "life, speaks, and has power to _kill_," (Rev. xiii. 15.) These properties of John's "image" are so opposite to those of the Papal images, that they effectually confute Mr. Faber's fanciful, not to say whimsical theory. It has been already shown that the "image" symbolizes the Papacy, the _fac-simile_ of the Roman emperor. THE BEAST'S "_deadly wound_." The Erastian heresy, the usual concomitant of prelacy, will readily account for Mr. Faber's explanation of the "deadly wound," which the first beast received in his sixth head. Constantine, he thinks, inflicted that wound by abolishing paganism. He writes as though the beast had been _actually killed_, and had lain literally dead for a period of nearly three centuries! (viz., from 313 till 606.) Yet the apostle assures us that the "deadly wound was healed." The _beast did not die_. Daniel gives no hint of the death of his fourth beast, which is the same as John's beast of the sea, until his final destruction at the close of the 1260 years. It was in fact under the reigns of Constantine and his successors, that ambitious pastors were nurtured into antichristian prelates, and passed by a natural transition into Popery. The empire never ceased to be a beast during the whole period of its continuance. The sixth _head_ was wounded, but the beast still survived. The sixth or imperial form of government was changed, but that change brought no advantage to the Christian church either in her doctrine or order. As a distinct horn of this beast the British nation with her hierarchy is easily traceable to mystic Babylon in point of maternity. Since, as well as before the time of Henry the Eighth, spiritual fornication has ever been the crime of the "British Establishment." This historical fact requires no proof.